WhiteCross/NARUS IBI Solutions usage pattern analysis

7/27/2019 WhiteCross/NARUS IBI Solutions usage pattern analysis

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WhiteCross/NARUSIBI Solutions

usage patternanalysis

Capturing and understanding subscriber usage patterns is

fundamental to the success of an IPSPs business. To

maximize profitability, IPSPs must attract, manage, and

maintain customers that fit best with the business model the

IPSP employs. In other words, an IPSPs business model will

dictate the usage profile of the most profitable subscribers.

a w h i t e c r o s s w h i t e p a p e r


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table of contents

1 WhiteCross/NARUS IBI Solut ions WhiteCross

6

5

4

32

1executive summary 2introduction 3

the business advantage of 4

usage pattern analysisbilling 4

churn management 5

new service offerings 5

acceptable use policy setting, monitoring and fraud detection 5

summary 6

characteristics of an effective 7UPA solution

data collection 7

data analysis and transformation 7

information presentation and delivery 7

WX/NARUS UPA solution 8NAR US IBI platform data collection and session reconstruction 8

WhiteCross servers (WXD ES) data analysis and transformation 9

WhiteCross and NARUS solutions information presentation 9

summary 12

appendix: WX/NARUS ASP 13

delivery services


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1executive summary

As fewer new customers sign up for IP services, Internet

Protocol Service Providers (IPSPs) will have to shift focus

away from simply capturing a fair share of new subscribers

to managing and capitalizing on existing customers by offer-

ing new billing plans and differentiated services, reducing

and managing subscriber churn, and setting and enforcing

acceptable usage policies. Little, however, has been spent

implementing the Internet Business Infrastructure (IBI) need-

ed to support this shift.

Fundamental to all IBI solutions is an understanding of

subscriber usage of IP services through Usage Pattern

Analysis (UPA). UPA is the analysis of subscriber usage

information captured at the application layer, combined with

offline data such as user demographics, billing data, and

customer service interaction to create service and subscriber

usage profiles.

By understanding service and subscriber usage profiles,

IPSPs can make more informed and effective decisions

regarding major IBI concerns such as billing, churn manage-ment, new service offerings, and acceptable use policies and

enforcement.

The elements of an effective UPA solution include data

collection, data analysis and transformation, and information

presentation and delivery. The data collection platform needs

to capture detailed information that completely characterizes

the applications and services used and the quality of the

users experience. The data analysis platform must correlate

this information with offline data sources such as user demo-

graphics, billing data, and customer support history and pro-

vide a data analysis capability that is flexible, scalable, and

powerful enough to handle large volumes of data quickly (for

train of thought analyses). Finally, the UPA solution must

present and deliver the results as actionable information; that

is, the solution must present answers, not just more data for

the user to analyze.

NARUS and WhiteCross have partnered to deliver

unique IBI solutions by leveraging core capabilities from

both companies.The result of the partnership is a suite of

business intelligence applications and services through

which IPSPs can understand their customers usage pat-

terns, and use that knowledge to prepare, implement and

monitor the success of new services and billing plans, man-

age customer churn, set and enforce usage policies, and

increase overall profitability.

The NARUS and WhiteCross solution is based on the

NARUS IBI Platform and the WhiteCross Data Exploration

Server (WX/DES). The NARUS IBI Platform captures appli-

cation-level subscriber usage information directly off high-speed networks, in real-time. The WX/DES provides a scal-

able platform with the power to perform rapid analysis of

large volumes of usage data at the speed of thought. The

resulting Usage Pattern Analysis (UPA) solutions are offered

through a service bureau. The solutions and services include

an out-of-the-box solution, project-based services, and on-

going, continuous custom reporting and analytic services.

The result is a unique set of tools that enable IP service

providers to manage their businesses and keep up with the

fast-moving pace of the IP services market.

WhiteCross WhiteCross/NARUS IBI Solut ions 2


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2


introduction

Until recently, IPSPs have focused almost exclusively on

building out their physical infrastructure. As more and more

individuals and businesses flocked to the Internet, IPSPs

focused on adding capacity, increasing bandwidth, and rush-

ing into new geographic areas. Services were undifferentiat-

ed, and the industry took a one size fits all approach to

pricing and bundling of services.

The environment in which IPSPs operate, however, is

changing dramatically:

s As fewer new customers sign up for IP services, and as

the market for IP service providers becomes saturated,

IPSPs are forced to shift their focus away from simply

capturing a fair share of new customers. Instead, they

have to actually steal share away from competitors.

s As new players enter the market with new business

models, no IPSP can afford to offer the same, undiffer-

entiated services. Instead, they must possess a dynam-

ic understanding of what services subscribers want andhow much they are willing to pay for those services.

s As more and more mission-critical systems are

deployed across IP networks, IPSPs cannot afford to

offer one grade of best effort service. Instead, IPSPs

will have to offer quality of service (QoS) and delivery

options to meet the different needs of different sub-

scribers.

s IPSPs business problems can no longer be solved by

simply throwing additional bandwidth on the network.

Instead, IPSPs must be able to identify new business

models, new markets, and new service bundles to offer

subscribers.

In other words, the focus of the IPSP market is shifting

away from the physical infrastructure towards the Internet

Business Infrastructure (IBI).

IBI is the set of capabilities that enable IP service

providers to manage customers, services, and business

models. IBI tools allow IPSPs to define and deploy new ser-

vices, offer flexible and differentiated billing options, provide

proactive customer care, detect and defeat fraud, and man-

age customer churn. Figure 1 illustrates how IBI solutions

allow ISPs to increase profitability.

Fundamental to all IBI tools is an understanding of sub-

scriber usage of IP services through Usage Pattern Analysis

(UPA). UPA is the analysis of subscriber usage information

captured at the application layer, combined with offline data

such as user demographics, billing data, and customer ser-

vice interaction.

This white paper discusses the importance of UPA to

IPSPs who want to differentiate their services in the highly

competitive market for providing IP services to consumers

and businesses. It describes why UPA is critical to under-

standing customers needs and their satisfaction with current

IP service offerings. It also describes why business models

based on Usage Pattern Analysis are essential for driving

profitable growth in the areas of customer acquisition and

retention. Finally, it describes how the WhiteCross-NARUS

UPA solutions deliver an especially efficient and effective IBI

solution.

Figure 1 IBI Solutions

Customerand Services

Profiling

ServiceDefinition

ProfitabilityAnalysis

Billing CUSTOMERUSAGE DATA

ChurnManagement

Provisioning

FraudDetection

CustomerCare

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Identify and Drive Opportunities

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3the business value of usagepattern analysis

Capturing and understanding subscriber usage patterns

is fundamental to the success of an IPSPs business. The

value of a subscriber to an IPSP is directly correlated to the

subscribers usage of the network and services offered by

the IPSP. To maximize profitability, IPSPs must attract, man-

age, and maintain customers that fit best with the business

model the IPSP employs. In other words, an IPSPs business

model will dictate the usage profile of the most profitable

subscribers; it also has the effect of dictating the usage pro-

file of the most costly subscribers. By understanding these

usage profiles, IPSPs can make more informed and effective

decisions regarding major IBI concerns such as billing, churn

management, new service offerings, and acceptable use

policies and enforcement.

BILLING

As stated in the introduction, many IPSPs have employed

the same business model to date: flat rate, one-service-fits-

all model. So, while segmentation exists among accessproviders in the form of wholesale vs. retail, dial-up vs.

broadband, consumer vs. business, the same model is gen-

erally used for all segments: flat-rate, best-effort access to

the entire (and identical) set of IP services. Today, IPSPs

offering differentiated services are the exception, not the

rule.

As the market becomes increasingly saturated and corre-

spondingly more competitive, IPSPs are looking to use new

and creative billing plans as a competitive advantage.

Residential customers are starting to ask IPSPs why they

should pay $19.95 or more per month when all they use is

email and the web. Business clients want to know if the IPSP

can offer higher quality of service for certain applications like

video conferencing over IP.

A major barrier to implementation of usage-based billing

is the fear of the unknown. Specifically, without an under-

standing of the current customer base, it is impossible to pre-

dict the possible uptake and impact of different billing plans.

As such, the key to effectively implementing usage-based

billing lies in Usage Pattern Analysis. With UPA, an IPSP

can, for example, understand which IP services are most

accepted across the user base. IPSPs can analyze new

billing plans using actual subscriber usage data to gauge

potential revenues from the new billing plan compared to the

old one. After implementing usage-based billing, UPA allows

the IPSP to monitor the effects of new billing plans on sub-

scribers service usage, which in turn allows the IPSP to fur-

ther refine billing plans.

Figure 2 below is and example of a NARUS Intelligence

report that shows the distribution of average web traffic gener-

ated across percentile ranges of active web users. It is useful

for IPSPs that are analyzing current flat-rate models in anticipa-


Mbytes

66

60

54

48

43

36

30

24

18

12

6

01.0 2.0 3.0 4.0

Percentile Range of Active Subs

Traffic (Mbytes)

Figure 2 Web Traffic Distribution

Mby

tes

8

6

4

2

0

0.00.51.0

1.52.02.5

3.03.54.0

4.55.0

5.56.06.5

7.07.58.0

8.59.09.5

Percentile Range of Active Subs

Traffic (Mbytes)


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tion of moving to a usage-based model. The report is broken

out into two charts. The first chart shows the top 5% of users.

The second chart shows the bottom 95%. In this example, the

report shows that the top 4% of web users generated at least

10 megabytes of traffic per user. It also shows that users in the

top 5% range generate eight times as much web traffic (per

user) as users in the bottom 50%. If the IPSP was using a flat

rate billing model, this report could be used to identify this top

5% as the "costliest" segment of subscribers.This report also

provides critical input for creating new, usage-based billing

plans by showing IPSPs how service usage is distributed

across the active subscriber base. That is, this report identifies

the extent to which different segments of active subscribers are

using the service.

CHURN MANAGEMENT

A second challenge is protecting high-value customers

from competitors i.e. customer retention. Customers rarely

register their dissatisfaction with a service directly, preferring

to express it through a more indirect and costly mechanism,

i.e. by switching to a competitor. Churn is one of the costliest

problems faced by IPSPs today. Many IPSPs give it scant

consideration, preferring instead to replace lost customers

through enticements (lower flat-rate prices) or mergers andacquisitions. As the market moves towards saturation, how-

ever, these methods will prove ever more costly experi-

ence shows that once high-value customers are lost, they

are expensive to replace or entice back. Highest profits con-

tinue to be earned from existing customers who prefer to

remain with their current service provider subject to careful

management of their inertial hurdle the level at which their

dissatisfaction overrides their resistance to change.

Fortunately, customer dissatisfaction shows up early in

usage. Careful UPA will highlight subtle changes in customer

behavior and potential dissatisfaction with services reduced

session frequency, shorter sessions, and other changes in the

usage profile all indicate potential dissatisfaction. The answer to

the churn problem is in the detail; monitoring detailed usage

activity provides IP service providers the vehicle for designing

truly proactive customer responses.

NEW SERVICE OFFERINGS

By offering value-added services, IPSPs can attract newcustomers, increase profitability, and reduce churn. UPA pro-

vides an ideal means for understanding new trends in IP ser-

vices and content. By carefully monitoring where subscribers

are going on the web, what content they are downloading,

and what services they are using, an IPSP can determine

which value-added services or new content to offer.

For example, nearly every IPSP offers a home page to its

subscribers, generally consisting of a links page, a search

engine, news and weather reports, and e-commerce offer-

ings. With UPA, the services and offerings on these home

pages can be much more complete, effective, and targeted.

Consider a case in which an IPSP using UPA discovers that

streaming news video usage is trending upwards across the

user base. The IPSP may want to partner with CNN or other

news providers to offer that coverage directly on the IPSPs

homepage, thus keeping subscribers on the site longer and,

ultimately, increasing advertising revenue. Additionally, the

IPSP may see that most subscribers logged on to the net-

work from noon to one oclock PM are browsing e-commerce

sites. The IPSP may want to dynamically change its home-

page content during that hour to focus primarily on its e-com-

merce offerings before shifting back to streaming video newsclips for the 6:00 to 9:00 PM time slot. Used in this fashion,

UPA enables an IPSP to optimize the attractiveness of its

services across the boundaries of time, geography, and cus-

tomer segments.

ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY SETTING

MONITORING AND FRAUD DETECTION

An additional way that IPSPs can manage customers and

profitability is by setting, monitoring, and enforcing accept-

able use policies regarding email spam, account fraud,

home-based servers, etc.

One such policy concerns outgoing email usage. Spam,

or unsolicited commercial email, is at best a nuisance for

users and at worst, a serious liability that consumes network


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resources and can accelerate churn. With an effective UPA

solution, potential spammers are more easily identifiable

through statistical analysis of current and historic email

usage of the potential violators.

A second example is home server usage. Particularly on

broadband residential IP networks, subscribers that are only

paying for Internet access may be hosting servers, a direct

violation of the service agreement. Through proper monitor-

ing using UPA, an IPSP has a much greater chance of identi-

fying these policy violators and either charging them for the

hosting service or terminating their service agreement.

Figure 3 is another example of a NARUS Intelligence report

that can be used to help detect fraud.This report identifies the

extent of potential account fraud by showing the percentage of

users with simultaneous logins.The report identifies the per-

centage of users who potentially gave out their personal

account name and password to others.

An IPSP can use this report to understand the scope of

account fraud, and then use the NI report that identifies

these users (along with that users total connection time,

maximum number of simultaneous logins, and total traffic

generated in terms of megabytes) to cut down on this type of

fraud. By identifying these users and taking action, the IPSP

can reduce costs and free up resources for other, legitimate

users.

SUMMARY

An effective Usage Pattern Analysis solution provides the

insight and actionable information needed to implement and

manage new and creative billing plans, new and better ser-

vice offerings, improved churn management systems and

policies, and enforceable acceptable-usage policies.


11%

89%

Simultaneous Segment Number of UsersUsers with No Simultaneous Logins 11,856

Users with Simultaneous Logins 1,450

Figure 3 Simultaneous Logins


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This section describes the characteristics of an effective

UPA Solution. The major areas of consideration include data

collection, data analysis and transformation, and information

presentation and delivery.

DATA COLLECTION

An effective UPA solution is built on a foundation of a

robust, scalable, and complete data collection methodology.

The solution must capture subscribers detailed network

usage at the application level (layer 7 of the OSI Model) to

completely characterize the applications and services used

and the quality of the users experience. This data collection

must be scalable to meet the needs of even the largest

IPSPs, and, since UPA is the foundation of all IBI solutions,

data collection must be revenue-grade: All applications and

services must be visible, and no data can be lost.

DATA ANALYSIS AND TRANSFORMATION

Once data is collected, it must be correlated with off-line

data such as user demographics, billing data and customer

support history. By filtering, aggregating, and statistically

analyzing the data, it is transformed from its raw form into

meaningful business knowledge, upon which an IPSP can

effectively implement IBI solutions, introduce and enforce

effective policies, and offer new, value-added services.

An effective UPA solution is flexible, scalable, and robust.

It must be able to accept a variety of data sources, including

real-time data drawn directly from the network, batch infor-

mation drawn from application servers, gateways, and other

devices, and offline sources such as account histories, billing

databases, demographic data, etc. Since users are often per-

forming train of thought analyses, the UPA Solution must be

able to process and store tremendous volumes of data with

minimal lag time.

To better understand the issues an effective UPA solution

must overcome, consider an IPSP with 100,000 residential

broadband subscribers. Assume that each subscriber is

actively engaged on the network for one hour per day, and

assume that each generates 120 records per day (records

per day can vary dramatically depending on the granularity of

data captured; 120 records per day is an average number of

records). This means that the subscribers on the IPSPs net-

work will generate 12,000,000 records per day. To work with

60 days of IP data, the IPSP would need a UPA solution that

could handle 720,000,000 records in a timely fashion. This is

a conservative estimate; by changing just a few assumptions,

the numbers of records are counted in billions.

INFORMATION PRESENTATION

AND DELIVERY

The final key to an effective UPA solution is the presenta-

tion and delivery of actionable business information. An

effective UPA solution offers two broad choices to the user:

predefined reports and analyses that can be used out of the

box to enable rapid characterization of broad patterns, or

custom reporting and analyses that support directed inquiry

once the basic patterns have been characterized.

Predefined reports provide a range of basic statistics on

user and service traffic across time, geography and users.

Custom reporting and analyses can combine this information

with user demographics, billing data and customer support

history to analyze the potential of new billing plans, price

changes, and new products. Alternatively, the data can be

subjected to directed inquiry to highlight potential misuse of

services or to predict churn.

4characteristics of aneffective UPA solution


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The WhiteCross/NARUS UPA Solution is a multi-level solu-

tion based on the following:

s The NARUS IBI Platform for usage data collection

s The WX/DES engine for high-performance analytical

processing

s Powerful applications for manipulating and viewing

analytic information

The power of the WhiteCross/NARUS UPA Solution means that

it scales to millions of subscribers creating billions of events,

with average report generation time measured in seconds, not

minutes or hours.

NARUS IBI PLATFORM DATA COLLECTION

AND SESSION RECONSTRUCTION

NARUS performs usage data collection using several

technologies. The most unique is NARUS Semantic Traffic

Analysis (STA), which extracts usage data directly from high-

speed carrier networks. NARUS Analyzers provide a physical

interface to the network to monitor the data stream and

parse each packet to extract packet header and payload

information in order to reconstruct user sessions in real-time.

The Analyzers extract information identifying the user, the

application (e.g. web browsing, messaging, streaming media,

IP telephony) and the content (URL, email, video, multi-point

conference) of each session. The Analyzers are non-intru-

sive, passive devices that process traffic without introducing

any latency or impacting network throughput. They are typi-

cally installed at major traffic collection points within a

providers network, i.e. at primary points of presence (POPs).

Data from NARUS Analyzers can be easily supplemented

with data from network and application devices using

NARUS Virtual Analyzers. The Virtual Analyzers interface

with network devices (e.g. routers, switches, gateways) and

application devices (servers) and gather information using

industry standard or vendor proprietary methods. Virtual

Analyzers are available for collecting data from a wide range

of devices and techniques including SNMP; log files, Cisco

NetFlow, and others.

Applying business rules to the data from STA and Virtual

Analyzers, NARUS LogicServers turn network-level events

into events that have meaning in terms of a service

providers offerings. For example, a streaming media session

might generate records that record the total elapsed time, or

the number of bytes transferred, or simply the fact that a spe-

cific piece of content was accessed. With the flexibility to

apply different business rules, these real-time aggregators

can process the same stream of events in different ways to

meet the needs of different applications, such as fraud detec-

tion, policy monitoring or billing.

Feeding this stream of events to a WhiteCross Data

Exploration Server (WX/DES) provides IP service providers a

potent weapon for analyzing, understanding and managing

customers and networks in broadband environments.


5WhiteCross/NARUS UPA solution

Figure 4 WhiteCross/NARUS UPA Solution

NARUS Analyzers

NARUS Logic Servers

NARUS API

WhiteCross Data Exploration Server

NARUSIntelligence

WhiteCross

EasyStart

WhiteCross

Xcellerate

WhiteCross

ReportingService

WhiteCross

AnalyticalServices


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WHITECROSS SERVERS (WX/DES) DATA

ANALYSIS AND TRANSFORMATION

At the heart of the WhiteCross/NARUS UPA Solution is

the WX/DES. The WX/DES is a linearly scalable server

architecture providing in-memory processing of large vol-

umes of data from gigabytes to terabytes. As well as phe-

nomenal processing speed, the WX/DES architecture is

designed to minimize the amount of effort spent on database

design and management concurrent loading and analysis,

support for fast, complex joins, and optimized processing of

highly complex queries without the use of indexes all of

which makes the WX/DES a simple data independent, load-

and-go environment.

WX/DES provides a truly scalable platform with the power

to perform rapid analysis of large volumes of IP data at the

speed of thought. It is already used, for example, by telecom-

munication companies to analyze call detail records and by

ISPs to analyze web logs.

The WX/DES has the proven power to:

s Perform train-of-thought analysis (unconstrained ad

hoc exploration) of large volumes of IP data it scales

to billions of rows/second

s Handle complex joins between different data sources

e.g. IP data, lifestyle and billing data, input from CRM

systems and third-party feeds

s React rapidly to changes in analysis needs by quickly

adding new or additional data and making the resulting

data ensemble analysis-ready through a concurrent

load & go approach to the process of data ETL

(Extraction, Transformation and Loading).

Combined with WhiteCross extensive exploration suite,

ExplorationSTUDIO, the WX/DES provides powerful, applica-

tion-based business intelligence (reporting, exploration and

mining) for sophisticated predictive behavior modeling. It has

the proven capability to analyze usage patterns to the finest

level of detail across thousands of services, millions of cus-

tomers and billions of events.

WHITECROSS AND NARUS SOLUTIONS

INFORMATION PRESENTATION

NARUS and WhiteCross have teamed to make it espe-

cially easy for IPSPs to benefit from UPA without having to

make significant upfront investments in IT infrastructure and

staff. The WhiteCross/NARUS (WX/NARUS) ASP Services

provide a range of UPA services on a hosted basis, providing

24 hour, 7 days a week access to comprehensive reports

from anywhere in the world.

Services are provided that enable clients to benefit from

both WhiteCross and NARUS technology, tools, skills, and

experience, without the capital investment normally required

to build a similar system in-house. WX/NARUS ASP Services

offer a range of business intelligence services to suit a

clients needs including standard reporting, custom report

development, and behavioral modeling. WX/NARUS ASP

Services are entirely scalable to the needs of the business

and completely secure. Each service can be delivered direct-

ly to the business unit that needs them via frequent reportsor via interactive models accessible across a company s

Intranet. Current services offered include:

NARUS Intelligence 2.0

NARUS Intelligence 2.0 (NI 2.0) provides a comprehen-

sive set of predefined reports to IPSPs showing summary

information in aggregate and across services (web browsing,

email, streaming media, etc.), over time, across the sub-

scriber base, and by geographic area.

Figure 5 is an example report showing the kind of summary

information provided by NI 2.0. Using this report, an IPSP can

understand the relative value of services by comparing the per-

cent of active users of a service to the percent of total traffic

accounted for by that service.


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In this example, newsgroups traffic and streaming traffic

are equal (15%), but twice as many users utilize streaming

audio (30%) as utilize newsgroups (15%). Additionally, email

traffic (10%) accounts for a smaller percentage of total traffic

than either, yet 85% of active subscribers use the service.

With an understanding of the value of a service relative to

other services, the IPSP executive can move on to the set of

reports available for that service. These reports will show

how usage of that service is distributed over the subscriber

base, how it varies over time or by region, and (in the case of

web browsing and streaming audio and video) where users

are going for content.

WX/Reporting Services (WX/RS)

WX/RS is an on-going service designed to deliver regular

tailored reports, models, or analyses to IPSPs. Typical areas

covered:

s Usage Reporting These reports determine which

activities customers are interested in, which informa-

tion, applications, and services get their attention, andwhere they find the most value in service offerings.

They are designed to provide the information needed

to optimize pricing models and shift to value-based

pricing. Usage Reports provide information on services

that customers are using (e.g. email, web browsing, file

transfer, streaming media), the amount of bandwidth

they are consuming, and the quality of service they are

experiencing. They also identify the most active users

e.g. show usage patterns for the top X% of active

users, broken out by service.

s Segmentation Reporting These reports are designed

to improve targeting of customers and services. The

reports identify significant groups by geographic region,

access type, bandwidth consumption, etc. and identify

strong correlations between services usage. Combined

with Usage Reports and creative billing plans, segmenta-tion reporting allows an IPSP to truly differentiate ser-

vices and offer the most effective, targeted billing plans to

subscribers. Figure 7 shows a decision tree extracted from

an investigation looking at attributes that are common to

people who shop at a website.


Percent

Service

Video Conferencing

VoIP

Web Browsing

Streaming Video

Streaming Audio

News Groups

File Transfer

Email

0 30 60 90

Percent of Total Traffic Percent of Active Users

Service Email File News Streaming Streaming Web VoIP VideoTransfer Groups Audio Video Browsing Conferencing

Percent ofTotal Traffic 10 8 15 15 5 40 5 2

Percent ofActive Users 85 10 10 30 15 90 5 1

Figure 5 User and Traffic Profile by Service

N ( 31 8, 12 7) 2 9. 4%Y ( 76 2, 65 1) 7 0. 6%Total 1,080,778 32.5%

N (2,212,492)66 .4%Y (1,117,572)33 .6%Total 3,330,064

N (18, 409) 28. 8%Y (45, 423) 71. 2%Tota l 63 ,082 1 .9%

N ( 27 7, 79 3) 3 4. 6%Y ( 52 4, 23 5) 6 5. 4%Total 802,028 24.1%

Type DType A

SEGMENT

Type CType B

FOOD_DRINK

ASTROLOGIST

GENDER HEALTH FITNESS INCOME FOOD_DRINK

GENDER GAMBLER TECHIE ACCESS

GENDER

NYYN

Y N F M

N (1,894,365)84 .2%Y ( 35 4, 92 1) 1 5. 8%Total 2,249,286 67.5%

N (2,848) 61.8%Y (1,758) 38.2%Tot al 4, 606 0. 1%

N (75,765) 9 4.1%Y (4,721) 5.9%To ta l 8 0, 48 6 2 .4 %

N (1,537,370)87 .8%Y ( 21 3, 83 8) 1 2. 2%Total 1,751,208 52.6%

N (78,613) 92.4%Y (6,479) 7.6%To ta l 8 5, 09 2 2 .6 %

N ( 278, 38 2) 6 7. 4%Y ( 134, 60 4) 3 2. 6%Total 412,986 12.4%

N (40,334) 14.5%Y ( 23 8, 41 6) 8 5. 5%Total 278,750 8.4%

N (21,925) 10.2%Y ( 19 2, 99 3) 8 9. 8%Total 214,918 6.5%

Figure 7 Automated Segmentation Analysis

200,000

150,000

100,000

50,000

0

Hour

0 2 4 68 1

0 12 1

416

18 2

022

VDOLive

KERBEROS

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TCP

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NETBIOS-SSN

TELNET

KERBEROS

DOMAIN

FTP

IMSP

IMAP2

AUTH

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AOL

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HTTP

Figure 6 Protocol Usage by Hour of Day


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s Customer Profiling These reports are designed to

score customers according to their value to the compa-

ny. The reports identify profitable versus unprofitable

customers, customers likely to churn, customers likely

to commit fraud, and customers abusing acceptable

use policies. The reports show an individual users

behavior over a specified period (e.g., which services

they used, when, and how much). The reports drill

down to which services an individual user prefers, and

which times of the week are peak times for them.

s Content Reporting These reports are designed to

generate important metrics for web content: popularity

of web sites, stickiness, long-term appeal, etc. These

reports also identify the characteristics of users using

the sites from an analysis of data such as raw hits, hits

by user segment, amount of time spent at site, number

of visits over specific time periods, sites visited per ses-

sion, pages viewed, content categories, etc. Figure 8 is

an example report showing the daily popularity of a page

by the hour.

s Network Usage Reporting These reports provide

network managers and architects with complete visibili-

ty into their networks. They are used to assist in reduc-

ing costs by optimizing usage of available network

resources. The reports help diagnose potential problem

areas within the network, optimally configure and man-

age all aspects of network operations, and make the

most cost-effective decisions regarding future equip-

ment investments.

WX/Analytical Services (WX/AS)

WX/AS is an on-going service for proactive investigation

of time critical business developments or changes in market

or customer behavior. Typical areas covered:

s Pricing These analyses measure the impact of pric-

ing on usage behavior, assist with the development of

models for optimization of pricing, analyze impact of re-

pricing, measure profitability by customer/day/time/etc

s Campaign Targeting These analyses identify key

customer segments, analyze the impact of special

offers, identify most/least profitable customers, and up-

selling/cross-selling opportunities

s Churn These analyzes build profiles of normal

usage to predict future customer behavior and to flag

patterns likely to predict churn, identify loyal customer

patterns and the impact of enticements.

PageImpressions

1600000

140000

120000

100000

80000

60000

40000

20000

0

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Page Impression by Day and HourAge Band 25-36

Hours of Day

Figure 8 Page Impressions by Day and Hour


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WX/NARUS ASP offers several services: one out-of-the-

box service (NARUS Intelligence), two project-based ser-

vices (WX/EasyStart & WX/Xcellerate) to establish the

framework and scope of working relationships as well as

delivering initial results, and two on-going services

(WX/Reporting Service & WX/Analytical Service) to deliver

results to clients in a continuous manner.

NARUS Intelligence 2.0is an easy to deploy, out-of-the box

reporting tool. The predefined reports contained in NARUS

Intelligence 2.0 allow an IPSP to quickly start viewing sum-

mary reports on network usage, both in aggregate and

across major IP services (web browsing, email usage,

streaming media, VoIP, etc.). The reports provide a great way

for an IPSP to start generating and viewing information and

as inputs into billing decisions, policy setting and monitoring,

and service profiling.

WX/EasyStart (WX/ES)is a project-based service for start-

up companies or business units that require basic analysis

and reporting. WX/ES provides clients a menu of reports andanalyses from which to choose. WX Consultants work with

client personnel to

1. Identify the most urgent business

issues to be investigated.

2. Determine appropriate data sources

and build the initial data ensemble.

3. Build the reports and analysis.

Once the scope of work for the WX/ES engagement is

complete, it is time to move into an on-going service mode,

either via a WX/Reporting Service or a WX/Analytical Service.

WX/Xcellerate (WX/XC) is a project-based service for

companies with needs that are more complex or those who

wish to expand their portfolio of analytical applications.

WX/Xcellerate is based on WhiteCross proven Exploration

Workshop methodology. WhiteCross facilitated workshops

are staffed by WhiteCross and NARUS consultants who work

with business managers to rapidly develop and interrogate

business scenarios to identify critical opportunities and return

high priority results. The key deliverable for extracting maxi-

mum information value is the design and construction of an

initial or expanded data ensembleand associated analyses

and reports. Once the scope of work for the WX/XC engage-

ment is complete, it is time to move into an on-going service

mode, either via a WX/Reporting Service or a WX/Analytical

Service.

WX/Reporting Service (WX/RS)is an on-going, continuous

service delivering regular reports, models or analyses to the

client. These reports can be provided in multiple forms to suit

specific needs for example, as hard copy, as spread-

sheets, as OLAP cubes, as a data summary, as SQL, etc. A

reporting service can take the form of reports or models, for

example, of high-profit customers, customer segmentations,

service usage, etc. Business managers can access the

Figure 9 WX/EasyStart & WX/Xcellerate

Process Flow

7appendix WX/NARUS delivery

service


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reports and analyses from their desktops for ad-hoc updates

as well as receive regularly scheduled delivery of updates.

WX/Analytical Service (WX/AS)is an on-going, continuous

service providing the use of WX/NARUS technology and

experts for the proactive investigation of time-critical business

developments and changes in market or customer behavior.

WX/NARUS provides the capability to execute complex analy-

ses at the direction and discretion of the client or at the initia-

tive of WX/NARUS. WX/NARUS provides a forward-looking

competitive intelligence function through this service.

WX/AS projects include ad-hoc analysis, data mining,

and data exploration projects to investigate particular busi-

ness issues or opportunities for maximizing the yield from

customer information assets.These may be based on

WX/NARUS existing portfolio of applications such as Churn

or Pricing, or be custom developed to meet a clients specific

needs. Examples include: special customer segmentation

exercises; churn analyses, profit sensitivity to pricing

changes, and preemptive competitive analyses.


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388 Market Street

Suite 1450

San Francisco, CA 94111 USA

Tel: 415 249 0124

Fax: 415 908 6889

Waterside Park

Cookham Road

Bracknell RG12 1RB

United Kingdom

Tel: 44 (0) 1344 300770

Fax: 44 (0) 1344 301424

[email protected]

www.whitecross.com

WhiteCross/NARUS IBI Solutions usage pattern analysis

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